The Doom
by Luinramwen
Summary: Warning: this is a DL/LoTR crossover, leaning a little heavy on the LoTR side, but oh well. Sam Gamgee stars as a kender in the scene on Mt. Doom. Muahahahaaa...I mean, POOR Frodo! Will Middle-Earth survive? Please. R/R.
1. Mt Doom

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The Doom

Chapter One

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Just a bit of an introduction: This story is sort of a combination of Dragonlance and Lord of the Rings. Sam is portrayed as a kender, and naturally, if you combine this with the Ring and a kender's natural curiousity, it makes for some interesting situations.This is the scene on Mount Doom when the Ring is about to be destroyed. Also, a disclaimer: I do not own LoTR or Dragonlance. Confound it all!

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Frodo leveled Sting at Gollum's scrawny chest.

"All right then, Smeagol, if you hurt me or Sam here, I'm not going to have mercy and not kill you. You will die by my cold hard steel if you do not leave. NOW!"

Sam watched wide-eyed and delighted as Gollum crawled away, whimpering. "Wow, Frodo, that was sure something. For a second there I was sure you were a goner, but you weren't. Can I see your sword for a minute? I won't keep it," he added hastily, seeing Frodo's wary look, "but it sure is neat. How do you make it glow like that? I remember Uncle Trapspringer telling me about finding a sword like that once; let's see, now how did it go? O, yes -"

"Sam, shut up. We have no time for your kender tales right now if we're going to destroy the Ring in time."

Sam gave an indignant cry. "But Frodo, it's a really good story, and it wouldn't take that long to tell -"

"I said be quiet, you doorknob!"

"Yes, Frodo," Sam said meekly, subsiding into a temporary silence. Frodo glanced away at the small black figure of Gollum. 

"Now, Sam, I want you to be rear-guard and watch out for Gollum if he comes back. It's a very important job, do you understand?"

"I understand, Frodo. But what will you be doing while I'm rear-guarding you? What do I do? Does that mean I will be guarding your rear end?"

"No, no, NO, Sam, it just means you will keep watch for things that will be coming from behind. I don't want any distractions while I'm destroying the Ring."

Sam pouted, but almost immediately forgot about his hurt feelings, as he was appropriating Frodo's sword. It looked quite jaunty tucked in at his belt.

"All right, then, I'm off." Frodo's hand went up to his neck as he said this, to clasp the Ring that always hung there by a golden chain. 

It was not there. He frowned and patted around, even sticking his hand into his pocket to see if it had by chance fallen in there. Then he noticed Sam's large brown eyes looking innocently up at him.

"Sam," he said warningly. "Where is it?"

"Where's what?"

"The Ring!" Frodo burst out angrily.

"What ring? O, you mean _the_ Ring! I don't know where it is. Maybe you lost it."

"Sam, this is no time for games! Give it to me NOW!"

"O all right, all right," Sam muttered, delving into his pockets. His pouches he had been forced to drop down a pit, to lighten the load, as Frodo had put it. He had also lost his beloved cooking utensils, which meant he couldn't practice any of the cooking skills he had picked up on the road, even if though there wasn't any food besides lembas.

He discarded a mallorn leaf, a wineskin stopper, a shiny piece of blue glass, a slimy, chewed-up-looking object, an elf-necklace, a dead rat, several spoons and some odd-looking coins before he finally found what he was looking for.

"See?" Sam said as he handed the Ring to Frodo. "I was keeping it safe for you. Any common thief might have taken it. You should take better care of it. See, I even cleaned it up a bit for you!"

"Sam, the Ring doesn't _have_ to be clean to be destroyed," Frodo said wearily.

"O well, it is always important to look your best," Sam argued, "even if you're about to be chucked into a fiery mountain. Say, that would be a neat way to die! Falling down and down with magma rising up to get you. Although it could get awfully warm..."

Frodo let Sam ramble on to himself. Meanwhile he started on up the Mountain, to do the final deed for good or for ill.

It took Sam a few minutes to realize he was alone. "Where did Frodo get to, I wonder?" he mused aloud. "Frodo! Frodo!" he called. No answer.

Sam felt a snuffle coming on. "He's gone and left me behind, while he gets all the excitement. I suppose he wants to do it himself, but that's awfully mean of him. Maybe he didn't really mean to."

A thought occurred to him. "O boy!: I forgot. Frodo wanted me to be rear-guard. I've never done that before!"

Considerably cheered, Sam started pacing back and forth, looking down the Mountain. But before long, his pace slowed. "I'm bored," he announced to himself.

At that precise moment he was bowled over from behind by a lean black shape. Gollum hurtled past, hissing, "My precious, my preciouss! We musstn't let Him get it!"

"Hey!" Sam shouted after him. "Where are you going? Can I come too?"

As he followed Gollum's progress upwards with his eyes, he noticed with a queer feeling starting in the region of his stomach that he couldn't see Frodo. And then to his delight and susequent distraction from his former thoughts, Gollum started fighting like mad with some invisible thing near the brink of the fiery chasm.

"O, I do wish I could see better!" Sam exclaimed, hopping up and down. He started running up the mountain. 

Suddenly, Frodo reappeared, clutching his hand. What was wrong with him? Sam wondered. Gollum was dancing like a maniac, holding something in the air. What was it?

And then with a demonic shriek, Gollum slipped and fell down, down, down.

The mountain erupted.

"Wow!" said Sam, wide-eyed and grinning. "That's incredible!"


	2. Oops

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Chapter 2

Sam watched the awesome display of flying fiery rocks and ash and thick black smoke when he realized that Frodo was still kneeling at the chasm's edge.

"Drat him," Sam muttered resignedly. "I don't know how he gets along without me. I'm coming, Frodo, don't you worry!" he finished off, yelling, and began careening up the slope. If Frodo had heard him, he _would_ have been worrying. The last thing any hobbit needs on the brink of disaster is a kender nearby.

A fireball just missed incinerating Sam as he bounded upwards. Oblivious to the fate he had barely avoided, the kender continued on to Frodo, unconsciously dodging flying debris, rocks, and more fireballs.

At last the loyal kender reached his friend. "Isn't this so cool?" Sam marvelled excitedly. "I don't think even Uncle Trapspringer's ever seen anything like this! Wait'll I tell all the other kenders!"

"Other kenders?" Frodo asked, considerably alarmed. "Th-there's no other kenders anywhere around _here_, is there?" Which showed that he was back to normal, Sam realized, because if he'd said that even an hour ago he would have gotten the response, "That's nice, Sam." (Which showed just how corruptive the influence of the Ring really was.)

"No. And - Oh, no," Sam said, rather disappointedly. "I forgot. We're right at the edge of an exploding volcano, and there's a bunch of lava maybe twenty feet to your right, and I really doubt that you can beat it down the mountain in your state, if you're anything like you were two minutes ago. I practically had to _drag_ you up -"

"Sam, please, if you don't shut up we don't have any chance of beating anything down the mountain." Frodo groaned, and put his head in his hands. That was when Sam noticed that one of Frodo's fingers was missing.

"Uh, Frodo? Were you aware that one of your fingers is gone? It looks like it was bitten off! That's weird! Did it hurt?-"

"Sam, for the Valar's sake SHUT UP!"

"Ok, ok, I'll shut up. Hey, Frodo?" Sam asked, suddenly realizing something that made him feel sort of queasy. "The whole point of this Quest was to destroy the Ring, right? Well, I have something that you should probably know -"

"Sam, _when I tell you to shut up, YOU SHUT UP_!"

"Yeesh," Sam muttered. "He's feeling better, all right."

Frodo sighed, and apologetically put an arm around Sam's shoulders. "Come on, let's get out of here. Sorry I yelled."

Together, the two companions toiled back down the way they had come. They lurched to a stop when Frodo collapsed, in the middle of a small knoll that would soon become a veritable island in the sea of magma. "Enough, Sam," he gasped. "I can't go farther. We might as well die here as anywhere else."

"Oh, come now, we're not going to die," Sam scoffed. "Why, I bet the eruption stops not twenty minutes from now. You're always saying we're going to die."

"I do not!"

"Yes you do. What about in Moria, with the Orcs and troll and Bal - thingymabobber swarming all around? And when we were on the river and I found you taking off on your own? And what about in the pass of Cirith Ungol? What about -"

"This time we are going to die!" Frodo said in a rage. "If I have to toss you into the lava myself!"

"But then only I would die, not you -"

"Sam...." Frodo said warningly through clenched teeth. Finally Sam realized that he was treading on thin ice, and he quieted down for a moment. 

Fumes were reaching them from the crater by this time. Frodo and Sam started coughing and gagging, Sam doing so very enthusiastically.

"Say, this is neat! I've never breathed gross gassy stuff like this before. D'you think it's poisonous? Do you think we'll die from it? That would be -"

"Sam, for pity's sake be quiet! This is not a kender picnic!"

"Oh, I know that," Sam replied cheerfully. "Did you know you're turning a really interesting green colour, Frodo?"

Frodo didn't answer, and Sam began to see why. His vision was beginning to cloud, and his brain was fogging over. Sam very firmly told his legs, which had suddenly turned to rubber and didn't seem to want to hold him up, to stay straight. He forced his eyelids to keep open (they had apparently taken on a mind of their own and were insisting on closing), as he didn't want to miss seeing everything about being killed by a volcano.

Thus, Sam was the only one to see the funny little winged black shapes flying out of the north, and the only one to realize that they were eagles as they got nearer. He was also the only one to be awake when the eagles (there were three) scooped the hobbit and the kender up. 

Drowsily, he tried to fight back unconsciousness to see who had rescued them. But he couldn't keep his eyes open any longer, and he slipped into blissful blackness.

Fizban, for it was he who had summoned the eagles to rescue the two friends, heard Sam mutter thickly and triumphantly as the kender passed out, "See, I _told_ you we weren't going to die, Frodo."

Sam woke to the cool quiet of a glade in - he had to force his dizzy head to remember it properly - Ithilien. He felt as though he had had a most exciting dream, with evil spiders and Orcs and exploding volcanoes and -

"So you are awake at last, Samwise Gamgee." A big, deep voice startled the kender. He looked to see who it was.

"Hey, don't I know you?" Sam scratched his head, puzzled.

"You do indeed."

"Who are you then?"

"I am - well - I am - FurrButt! No, Foozball, wasn't it? Or Flubber? Oh, I don't know."

"I know you! Fizban! Uncle Tas told me all about you!" Sam was intensely pleased. "Hey, you got rid of the brown! Good. I always thought that brown made your skin look sort of jaundiced, if you know what I mean. No offence or anything. You look much better in the white."

Fizban laughed. "Thank you, Sam. Uh, I don't suppose you've seen my hat anywhere, have you?"

"It's on your head," he explained. Sam sighed, stretched, and jumped out of the hammock that had been set up for him. "Where's Frodo?"

"He left to get something to eat."

"Oh, good. Maybe now he'll listen to my Important Announcement."

"What would that be?"

Sam didn't hear Fizban, as he had just spotted Frodo coming back with a mug of ale and some dried meat and bread in his hands. "Hey, Frodo?"

"What, Sam?" Frodo asked wearily. "It had better be good. I'm getting sick of your pointless questions."

"I have a rhetorical question for you: What would you do, um, if - if the Ring wasn't really destroyed?"

Dead silence ensued for a moment. Frodo turned white, then bright red. "What are you getting at?" His tone was more dangerous than any that Sam had heard before.

"I - I mean, if it only _looked_ like the Ring? But wasn't?"

"Sam!" Frodo yelped. "You don't mean to say that you still have it!"

"It was only a rhetorical question -"

"Oh, sure. Tell the truth."

"Yes." Sam's voice was very small.

"Yes, what?"

"Yes, the Ring wasn't really destroyed. I - I accidentally g-gave you m-my other ring of invisibility -"

"SAMWISE GAMGEE! YOU DOORKNOB OF A DUNDERHEADED COCONUT AND BRAINLESS, GOOFY THIEF! I'M GOING TO _MURDER_ YOU!!"

"Now, please be reasonable, Frodo," Sam gulped. "I didn't mean to -"

Frodo's hand went to his waist to draw Sting as he advanced on the hapless kender.

It wasn't there.

"SAM!" Frodo screamed.

The kender was off like a shot. "I thought you didn't want it anymore! You just dropped it! I was going to give it back, honeeeesst!" he yelled back over his shoulder.

Ranting like a maniac, Frodo gave chase.


End file.
